Japan PM: China vessels still intruding in waters

NEW YORK (AP) — Chinese government vessels are still intruding into Japanese territorial waters around contested islands, but the door to dialogue with Beijing is always open, Japan’s prime minister said Friday.

The Asian powers’ conflicting claims to the remote islands, called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China, have badly strained relations. China says it, too, is ready to talk, but only if Japan formally acknowledges disputed sovereignty.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan would make no concession on sovereignty over the Japanese-administered islands.

But he said Japan does not intend to escalate the issue, and both nations have responsibility to maintain regional peace. He said the relationship with China is one of Japan’s most important, and they have “inseparable” economic ties.

“The door to dialogue is always open, and I really hope that the Chinese side will take a similar attitude and have the same mindset,” Abe told a news conference after attending the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. He said their differences warrant “a good discussion among high-ranking officers of both governments.”

The standoff over the islands intensified last September, after Japan’s government bought three of the five unoccupied islands in the chain from a private owner. Japan portrayed the purchase as an attempt to block a proposal from a nationalist politician to buy and develop the islands, but the move deeply angered China, which says the islands have been theirs since ancient times.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was addressing the General Assembly later Friday.

Abe did not mention China in his address Thursday to the General Assembly, but said “changes to the maritime order through use of force or coercion cannot be condoned.”

Over the past year, Japan’s coast guard says there have been scores of intrusions by Chinese vessels into Japanese-claimed waters near the islands.

“The incursion by Chinese government vessels in our territorial waters is continuing, much to our regret,” Abe said Friday through an interpreter. “However, Japan would not make a concession on our territorial sovereignty. Having said so, we do not intend to escalate this issue any further. We have been dealing with this issue calmly and resolutely, and we shall continue to do so.”

The United States is concerned about the standoff between the world’s second and third-largest economies. As a treaty ally of Japan, it could be sucked in if a conflict broke out.